Our Catliolic Heritage in Texas
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condition the Lord commanded her to speak and, preaching to them of her faith, it seemed to her that she was actually doing it in her own language, Spanish, and that the Indians understood her as if she were speaking in theirs; and that though the Indians spoke in their own tongue, she understood them with all clearness. She preached to them with marvelous unction and instructed them in our religion. After the ecstacy was over, she found herself in the same place where she had been when she first lost her consciousness." 1 ° From 1621 to 1631 she is said to have visited these Indians frequently, having made as many as five hundred visits during this time. Tlie fttmano Indians. This nation, chosen for the miraculous visita- tions of the Venerable Mother Maria de Agreda, lived and roamed over a vast area of the present State of Texas. First found by Cabeza de Vaca in 15.36 in the vicinity of La Junta d·e·· ·i-;;;-Rios, near present day ..--Presidio,the Jumanos remained in this locality throughout the sixteenth century. It was here that Fray Rodriguez, Espejo, Castano de Sosa, and Bonilla and Humana found them. They roamed from below La Junta as far north as New Mexico and as far east as the Pecos and the Staked Plains of West Texas. During the first quarter of the seventeenth century a branch of this nation had moved to the great plains and appear to have lived upon the buffalo in west-central Texas, along the upper waters of Red River and the Colorado. It was while they were living on a stream which the Spaniards called Noeces or Nueces, that they were visited by Maria de Agreda. This river, erroneously thought to be the Arkansas, has definitely been identified with the present middle Concho, in Texas. Thus the miraculous instruction of these Indians by the Woman in Blue took place in this region, from where the fifty J umano emissaries set out to request missionaries, as commanded by Maria de Agreda in 1629.11 Fray Juan de Salas' first visit to t/ie fmnanos, 1629. After the arrival of the large delegation at old Isleta in July, 1629, no time was lost in making arrangements to comply with their request, now that there were sufficient missionaries. A few days later, accompanied by the 1 0Mange, Luz de Tierra incognito, 192-193. llFor a detailed discussion of these Indians, see Hodge, "The Jumano Indians," in Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, April, I 91 o; Bolton, "The Jumano Indians in Texas, 1650-1771 1 " TIie Quart1rl,,, XV, 66-84; also "The Spanish Occu- pation of Texas, 1519-1690" in Ibid., XVI, 7-11; and Hodge, A,,,r Memorial of Benavides, 272-27 5.
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